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Product Description Our current economic system—which assumes endless growth and limitless potential wealth—flies in the face of the fact that the earth’s resources are finite. The result is increasing destruction of the natural world and growing, sometimes lethal, tension between rich and poor, global north and south. Trying to fix problems piecemeal is not the solution. We need a comprehensive new vision of an economy that can serve people and all of life’s commonwealth. Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver use the core Quaker principle of “right relationship”—interacting in a way that is respectful to all and that aids the common good—as the foundation for a new economic model. Right Relationship poses five basic questions: What is an economy for? How does it work? How big is too big? What’s fair? And how can it best be governed? Brown and Garver expose the antiquated, shortsighted, and downright dangerous assumptions that underlie our current answers to these questions, as well as the shortcomings of many current reform efforts. They propose new answers that combine an acute awareness of ecological limits with a fundamental focus on fairness and a concern with the spiritual, as well as material, well-being of the human race. Brown and Garver describe new forms of global governance that will be needed to get and keep the economy in right relationship. Individual citizens can and must play a part in bringing this relationship with life and the world into being. Ultimately the economy, as indeed life itself, is a series of interconnected relationships. An economy based on the idea of “right relationship” offers not only the promise of a bountiful future but also an opportunity to touch the fullness of human meaning and, some would say, the presence of the Divine. Review “Bearing witness to a right relationship between people and nature, Brown and Garver provide better advice for an ecologically sustainable and socially just economy than all the Nobel laureates in economics combined.” —Richard B. Norgaard, Professor of Energy and Resources, University of California, Berkeley “This book deserves to sell a million copies. The questions asked—and answered—in Right Relationship make a vastly more important contribution to our future than analytical models for maximizing GDP.” —Herman Daly, Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, and winner of the 1996 Right Livelihood Award “The need for radical new ideas, not just reform, to reconstitute the existing economic system has never been more urgent. This monumental book makes a compelling case for the ‘right’ relationship between human activity and the natural world as the basis for the kind of model that is essential to put us on the pathway to a secure and sustainable future. It is imperative reading for all policy makers and the people on whose participation and support they depend.” —Maurice Strong, former Under Secretary-General and Special Advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations “Out of the rich Quaker tradition of personal commitment to peace, equality, and justice comes this powerful call to transform our relationship to the earth and its commonwealth of life. In recognizing the inherent connections between ecological health, social well-being, and a moral economy, the authors have provided, for Quakers and non-Quakers alike, light amid the darkness.” —Curt Meine, conservationist and author of Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work “Right Relationship offers up a welcome and needed change to the technocratic and ethically empty programs that have dominated the sustainability challenge. At the same time the book grounds its arguments in practical terms that can be enacted into new forms of governance and social behavior.” —John R. Ehrenfeld, Executive Director, International Society for Industrial Ecology, and author of Sustainability by Design “The challenge mankind faces of turning around our planetary emergency will require a revolution as enormous a